The elderly: A Challenge for legislators

120 pages
ISBN: 0-7974-2515-2
LILIAN Masitera has unveiled a new book, Start With Me. It deals with the role of women and old age in Zimbabwe.
Farai Timba doesn’t want his wife Edina to continue travelling around the country selling clothes, which would enable them to give their two boys and daughter a decent education.
Edina has returned from Zvishavane. She is sitting with her daughter in their two-roomed house in St Mary’s suburb, Chitungwiza. “Mama! Mama!” says Jestina. “How are you, Mama? I wish you didn’t have to go away so often.”
“I’ll stop when you grow up, and can look after yourself,” says mother. “Here, try this dress.”
“This is beautiful, Mama! Can I wear it to church on Sunday? My friends will die of envy!”
“You can do that of course. We must visit your aunt Rudo. I must discuss many things with her. We must wait and hear what your father says.”
“Boo! Father will spoil everything. You know how he wants to see me toiling in this house. When you were away I washed, cooked and did everything. But he still said I was playing. Next time you go away, Mama, please take me along with you.”
“And, when you get married?”
“Ah! Who wants to get married?” asks the 12-year-old girl.
“I want to be like aunt Rudo. Her wardrobe is full of clothes. Her house is beautiful. I’ll have heaps and heaps of money to spend as I please. Nobody will be shouting at me. . .”
“. . . no kids, no nappies, and no sleepless nights!”
Jestina is surprised that her mother knows exactly what she wants.
“Every one would call you a prostitute, Jessy. Decent women marry.”
“Aunt Rudo is none of those horrible women . . . She doesn’t have a care in the world!”
“I fear for her,” Edina says to herself. “Soon it will be too late.”
Her daughter wants to emulate the woman with whom her mother is daggers drawn. The relationship between the two sisters was strained when Edina dropped out of Form Four to marry. Rudo graduated from university with a first class honours degree in economics.
Housewives from the village warned her that other girls of her own age had children. Farai Timba is not amused when his daughter pesters him with wanting to go and see Aunt Rudo.
“Let her go!” he snarls at Edina. “I’m not a fool. You’ve discussed this with her. I won’t stand in your way.”
That gives Farai the excuse he wants to go and play his disco machine at the bar, smoking mbanje. Edina swallows her pride, and wants to ask Rudo to stay with Jestina. She wants to remove the girl from the clutches of amorous men in St Mary’s.
She wants to give Jestina the chance to see from aunt Rudo that education is good, and that it can make her lead a good life.
“If Jestina grows up to be somebody,” Edina says to herself, “she might pull the boys up. She might also give me a decent life when I’m old.”
Jestina wants to stay with aunt Rudo because she has a beautiful flat; she has books and magazines; she has videos, and her food is delicious. The issue of the girl going to stay with her aunt is mentioned to Rudo in passing at the meeting, which takes place in St Mary’s.
Meanwhile, Farai Timba sees that their children respect their mother more. They see her paying their school fees and bringing food home. Out of vindictiveness he tells Edina his piece of mind in no uncertain terms. The wife trembles.
“For our daughter’s sake,” pleads the poor woman, “allow me to continue with my projects. She is the most gifted child we have.”
“If you ever travel out of Harare,” the husband snaps, “stay out of my site forever. You’re out if you ever come home at sunset. Make no mistake!”
When she hears her father swearing Jestina prays: “I want to study,” she says.
“I want to be learned. I want to make up my mind about things happening around me. My mother is poor and toiling. Father doesn’t care if I stop going to school.
“Give mother good health so that she can get the fees I want. Fill my mind with knowledge. Let me go back to school so that I can feel alive again. I’ll stick to my books and be a good girl.
“I shall use my knowledge to get my mother out of poverty. I’m 12 years old.”
Edina sees the letter which her daughter has written to God. It touches her heart. She doubles her effort to find a way of getting Jestina join other children when the new term begins.
Jestina needs school fees; she needs a uniform and she also needs books. Problems start mounting as a doctor diagnoses Edina with high blood pressure. The woman she sends to convert her Zimbabwe dollars into foreign currency squanders the money on cosmetics. The money she has been keeping in the house in foreign currency has disappeared.
Her son who has dropped out of school has fallen in love with the girl from next door. Her mother has heard that the lad has made another girl pregnant. She “eats embers”.
In the middle of this, Farai Timba walks out on Edina and the children. Her nerves are stretched to breaking point. Jestina bursts out crying. She is aware of the crisis, which she is facing.
She offers to help her mother to raise the money she needs to go back to school.
“I want to help you, Mama. What can I sell?”
“You can sell peanut butter sandwiches and soya mince samoosas, my dear. I can make those easily and cheaply.”
The girl finds the idea of selling snacks daunting. The thought of it makes her even more withdrawn. She shows fear in her eyes.
“The boys might laugh at me,” Jestina says to herself.
“The girls will certainly talk behind my back. . . But I promised God that I’ll not mess around.
“I’ve to relieve Mama of the burden, which is crushing her in one way or the other. I should keep the promise I made.”
That thought fortifies Jestina for the challenge ahead of her. The lad who dropped out of school is behind the raid in which three youths make off with the basket of sandwiches and samoosas, which Edina is selling.
She takes to bed. Jestina convinces her to go and take a rest to aunt Rudo’s flat. The elder sister brings their mother from the village to be with them during this difficult period of their life. Grandmother Rinashe is in her 70s. Her back is still straight and her eyesight is good for someone of her age.
The rheumatism that she has makes her to walk with a limp. It troubles her, when she wants to stand up. After taking three or four paces, she can take part in a race.
The old woman speaks to her daughters. “Now I’m alone with graves outside the homestead. . . We returned from burying your father. . . “
“We know what it takes for you to leave home,” says Edina. “We’ve no choice when we request you to come.”
“You know that I can’t afford the luxury of coming to Harare to play,” grandmother says. “Thieves creep in as soon as I turn my back on my home.”
This book by Lilian Masitera has come out at a time when Members of Parliament are set to debate the question of old age, when the House resumes sitting.
The creeping absence of the extended family system has played havoc with cultural values. HIV and Aids is carrying off young people that parents regard as security in their old age.
MPs have a tall order cushioning pensioners who put Zimbabwe on its feet from poverty.
They want to be loved. They have problems with their health, caring for orphans, housing, recreational facilities and a host of other woes.
Most important of all, old people say that each one of them deserves to get a pension for the service they have rendered the nation.
Social scientists have warned that loneliness is the biggest problem facing elderly parents when they are no longer able to help themselves. They want to remain indoors.
The picture which Lilian Masitera paints in Start With Me is bleak and depressing.
“And now,” says grandmother, “with your father dead, I’m quite by myself. . . I’m not accusing you of neglecting me. Both of you had to break away and carry on with your lives, the same way that today’s youths are doing.
“I’m only recounting today’s trend, that children are no longer an investment. Neither are they a guarantee of companionship in one’s old age. In fact, it is the other way round. Children need to be assured of affection and of adequate upbringing. If they are not, they grow into horrible adults. They can be a millstone around parents’ neck.
“The way of today’s world is that children should be born when parents are equipped to afford them a decent living. I wish your father had lived long enough to see the beautiful house where Rudo lives.”
Edina, sensing that her mother is referring to her, yawns with her jaws without opening her mouth. Mother sees this.
“Edina,” she says. “I couldn’t stop your father from letting you marry when you were young.
“I should do for your daughter what I failed to do for you. Her politeness and her habits have impressed me very much. She must be supported and encouraged.”
“How is school, Jessy?”
“I want to study hard and become a pharmacist,” says the girl. “But where will money come from?”
The grandmother’s answer to that question will shock you. This is the tip of the iceberg to what Masitera is offering in her book.
However, when all is said and done, grandmother Rinashe waits to hear what Parliament will say about old people.
Masitera was born in Bikita, Masvingo Province and is an acclaimed Mathematics educator at a local technical teacher training college.
She has received the International Poet of Merit Award from Washington DC, USA. She has had her poems published in a prestigious journal in Germany, and by the University of Louisiana in Monroe.
The artist has also won the Zimbabwe International Book Fair Award and has co-authored works with the Zimbabwe Women Writers.